Among the many innovations resulting directly from the continuing evolution of the Internet is the development of websites hosting real-time discussions among users located in separate geographic areas. Ordinarily, such an online discussion site, or “chat room”, provides a graphical interface in which a scrolling list of messages and associated authors, indicating the temporal order and logical interrelationship of the messages, is displayed on a computer screen. In more advanced online discussion interfaces, each author may be represented by a graphical icon or “avatar”, and may include one or more speech “bubbles” visually coupled with the avatar to associate the text of each message with the appropriate author. Moreover, some online role-playing game sites employ avatars, speech bubbles, and the like to facilitate discussion between game characters. In both the chat site and gaming site realms, the online discussion plays a central role, and thus arguably represents the primary focus of the site.